In my piece on security in Afghanistan, a commenter yesterday chided me for the term “militarizing aid,” saying the military is the quickest way to deliver aid, and few people complained about its role in helping to clean up the tsunami. I have never been comfortable, however, with the DoD’s usurpation of humanitarian projects (the Army commercials are especially shrill on this point)—the military, after all, is there to fight wars, not solve world hunger. At the same time, I’ve felt like something of a lone voice in the wilderness on this point—in part because people still seem afraid of being called “anti-military” because of their criticism, and because very few people really do seem to have a problem with it.
That’s why I was happy to see this Gordon Adams piece (I’m assuming the same Gordon Adams who teaches at the Elliott School) in the latest Bulletin. His point?
With respect to national security, the budget proposal highlights a trend with grave implications for U.S. national security: the continuing expansion of the Defense Department as a foreign policy institution, beyond its purely military role and responsibilities. At an accelerating rate, Defense is becoming deeply involved in program areas traditionally subject to State Department policy guidance and State/U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) program leadership…
It seems to make sense–Defense has the budget, skills, logistics, equipment, need, and direct contacts to provide these things. The regional military commanders argue that only Defense can move quickly in the high intensity threat environment of the so-called “long war” against terrorism. The State Department, they say, lacks the budget and personnel trained to manage such programs, while USAID focuses on long-term development, not security and reconstruction. Moreover, State can’t raise the funds for this because Congress mistrusts State’s ability to move quickly and spend wisely and has bogged down foreign assistance with “directives” and “earmarks” that limit the flexibility and agility needed to meet the requirements of such a long war.
While there is merit to these arguments, empowering Defense in these areas also contains risk. Militaries do not traditionally conduct foreign policy. They can have a tin ear to broader strategic considerations, and the military’s goal is efficiency and effectiveness in performing a military mission, uninfluenced by a concern for democracy, human rights, economic relationships, and other issues that affect U.S. relations with another country.
There is a reason, historically, why the U.S. government has crafted security assistance programs as a dual responsibility. Defense has the tools, but State has the perspective needed to embed these programs in broader strategic relationships. As a result, State has policy leadership; the budgets for these programs are requested as part of the international affairs budgets–not as part of the defense budget–and Defense has had significant input into defining needs and shaping programs.
You should absolutely read the whole thing, as it makes the critical point that a lack of focus, and policy laziness from Washington, have allowed the DoD to become the country’s primary instrument of foreign policy. And since when was the U.S. primarily a militaristic power?
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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{ 7 comments }
Interesting – I would object a bit to the “tin ear” part. When I was TF Eagle’s S-5 in Parwan, Kapisa, Kabul and Panjshir provinces I was very attuned to “broader strategic considerations”. I was quite aware of what we needed to do – and how. Short term help, capacity building (“long term development” even!) and avoidance of ‘aid-addiction’ were all well balanced by my commanders. [The USAID folks I met ranged from fantasically good to useless paper pushers].
Although I grew up, so to speak, in the Cold War military, I have seen warfare change. If helping with “foreign aid” is now part of it, so be it.
Oh, and “shrill”…?
Good food for thought, your post is. And the debate you mention is still active inside the Armed Forces too.
It’s not neccessarily so that the military could do the job better. Also, what does this expansion of roles do to the primary role of the military? The DoD oversaw the CPA in Iraq and it was a mess. Now plenty of that could be put upon the over-reliance of political appointees by the administration and the deliberate freeze-out of old hands from State, but the expansion of the role of Defense creates a money sucking beraucracy in the Pentagon. When it comes time to trim budgets, it will be the desk pilots and not the gun-toters who will be best positioned to protect their kingdoms.
I believe the military can deliver aid AND can see the big picture, I’m not sure the quasi-military DoD that Rumsfeld has created can be trusted to create an effective foreign policy or down the road effectively deliver aid.
I think part of what you’re missing is that the DoD isn’t there to do MOOTW missions – that’s mission bloat, brought on in part because the military can be easier to deal with from an administrative perspective. But that doesn’t make it the best option.
And I think the combination of aid and military is actually a Cold War concept – pre-Cold War, one could say, if you’re making a Wilsonian argument. The problem is, if the military is to be retasked to perform humanitarian missions, then they need to be re-trained as well, and that does not happen. My friends get sent to Iraq with training in the tactics they’ll need, and learn almost nothing about the locals, the neighborhoods, the major personalities of the areas they go to. NATO, and USAID, have both fallen into this trap as well – I documented a joint USAID/NATO team building a dam that had not a single speaker of Dari with them, and the NATO soldiers had bulldozed houses for its construction. Since they couldn’t speak with the locals, there was deep resentment and anger toward them.
This kind of thing is routine, even if you didn’t experience it. Unless and until humanitarian field work, including basic health, developmental economics, institutional theory, and local language and culture, is included as a standard and locally-tailored training package for soldiers being deployed on MOOTW missions, I will not trust the military to get the job done. It would be asking them to do a job they never trained to do.
Oh and about the shrill thing: not to disparage your branch or anything, but I find the “Army of One” commercials incredibly annoying, especially the one where the guy says he joined so he could help flood victims – this during the War on Terror. What happened to defending the country?
Um, “Army of One” is long gone. We didn’t like it either
It’s “Army Strong” now – try the Army homepage for a look.
Your friends in Iraq that learned nothing – well, double shame. On them for not learning, and even more on their command (and the S-5) for not teaching.
Okay, fine, then the commercials with the dad congratulating his son on shaking his hand are still just as bad. The Army isn’t there for self-esteem, it’s there to defend the country.
And I agree that it’s a shame they weren’t trained well. But when you’re given a week to get everything ready for deployment, including making arrangements with your job, family, house, and so on, there’s only so much reading you can do. And the training they got pre-deployment was all tactics and didn’t exactly leave much time for outside studying, at least if they enjoyed eating and sleeping after playing in a swamp for 10 hours.
Plus, and I hate to make this point because it strays dangerously close to Kerry’s malformed “joke”, but these are young, sometimes teenaged grunts who never went to college. How can they be expected to educate themselves on a region the brass hasn’t yet bothered to learn?
Hrm. The more I ponder this the more I realize I need to better clarify what exactly I am talking about. I fully agree with you that the military is really good at moving supplies – it’s part of what makes them so damned good at fighting wars. But I seriously question whether the DoD should have a role in crafting humanitarian policy, at least apart from a security and maybe logistical perspective.
Let’s consider this post a muddled start, and I’ll try to craft a more useful framework for further discussion, maybe over the weekend when I’m not at work all day.
Interesting post and comments. I think you have something here. I received a mailing yesterday from the US Naval Reserve encouraging qualified dentist to consider signing up. The ad talked of humanitarian efforts and had pictures of US naval personel helping what appeared to be non-US folks with dental needs. I always thought the military dental corps job was to keep the troops in top fighting form. This wasn’t addressed in the ad as I recall (round filed it, I’m too old).
I disagree with you that the so-called foot-soldiers need to know about the details of humanitarian aid efforts. The military command structure is such that only officers would really need to know what’s going on.
I would agree, except that they’re being asked to perform culturally sensitive operations that go way beyond simple security or fighting.